Heart of Stone

By Lyra Evans

Devon Stone has been living alone in the Mountain for twelve years. Being half-Werewolf, half-Wizard means there’s no real home for him in either Nimueh’s Court or Connor’s Court. And he’s been fending for himself for long enough to know he’s better off alone. Besides, by now he’s used to the loneliness and, most of the time, he likes it that way. Does a part of him want love? Sure. But that’s what romance novels are for. No Werewolf or Wizard wants to get involved with a halfbreed, anyway.

But when a strange and gorgeous Fae falls into his path—literally—Devon starts to wonder if maybe he’s finally got a chance at something real. If only he can open his heart enough to try.

Luke is in a peck of trouble. Well, maybe more than a peck. One deal too far, and he’s landed himself in the hands of the Sequoia crime family. And they’re itching for retribution. So Luke does what Luke does best—he makes a deal. Only this one is for his life, with a bargain so great even he might come up short. The Sequoias send him into Mount Draco to collect an abandoned stash of raw sapphires. But no one who goes into Mount Draco comes back out alive...

When Luke wakes up in the hands of a young and beautiful stranger who seems to live in the Mountain, he sees an opportunity that might just save his life. But the stranger adds more complications than he solves because—well, Luke might be falling for him. And love is a tough trade when his life is on the line.

Can Devon trust Luke enough to let him into his heart? Can Luke deliver on his deal without Devon finding out? Or will Luke’s dangerous secret cost him more than his life?

Heart of Stone is a 60,000 word M/M fantasy-romance set in the world of the Three Courts. It follows the events of the Worth Series and Ice Over Brook but it was written as a stand-alone with a HEA. It contains coarse language, violence, and explicit sexual content, and it is not intended for readers under 18 years of age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lyra Evans
• Release date: Dec 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005107611

Lyra Evans

Lyra Evans has been making up stories since she was a kid and writing them down since her best friends informed her that was actually a career. Though plot and fantasy are what drive her worlds, she's got a particular love for M/M romance that she can't quite kick (though who would want to?). She tries her best to mix those three elements in her novels. A lover of books, games, food, and travel, she's always excited to try something new.For updates on her novels and what inspires her, follow her on Twitter.If you'd like to receive an email alert every time one of her books goes live, you can subscribe to the newsletter here: eepurl.com/cm-Af2 (you'll only receive emails for new books, no spam).

Book preview

Heart of Stone

Lyra Evans

Copyright © 2017 Lyra Evans

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Twitter: @WriterLyraEvans

Cover design by Designran

This book contains scenes of explicit sexual content and is not suitable for readers under 18 years of age.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Shit, he was in trouble now. Whatever made him think he should try and deal a member of the Sequoia crime family, he didn’t know. But then again, he hadn’t known the bulky, Troll of a Fae he’d tried to deal was a Sequoia—though he was certainly large enough to be. Luke snorted at the idiocy of his own mental joke as he was manhandled into a narrow passage and folded unceremoniously into the backseat of a limousine.

Think this is funny? came the grinding stone grumble of the gangster he’d mistaken for a Troll. He really looked nothing like the rest of the Sequoia family. They were all willowy and tall, more like Birch trees than Sequoias, if truth be told, but they had all the weight of a Sequoia behind them when they decided they’d been disrespected. "No one moves in on my territory to sell sub-par stones to my clientele. You won’t be laughing pretty soon."

Two large men sat on either side of Luke, nearly crushing him with their bulk and making the supple leather of the backseat of the limo seem altogether unnecessary. He felt nothing but the slow bowing of his bones beneath the pressure on all sides. The car door slammed, and the cabin of the limo was thrown into darkness. Dark-tinted windows made this a perfect place to do business, he supposed, but now he was on the inside of one of the smooth-lined, shiny black cars, he decided he was much less interested in finding out what kind of ‘business’ went on behind the black panes of glass.

Why had he been stupid enough to try and sell knock-off stones to a Fae in an expensive suit? He should have known that would be the Sequoia whose territory he was impinging on. But greed got the best of him, and the Sequoia looked so deeply stupid he’d thought he could unload some of his knock-offs. They weren’t even good knock-offs. True, the rubies and garnets were actually just coloured quartz he’d managed to enhance the pigment in, but his diamonds were just cubic zirconia—a stone that had no magical properties whatsoever but looked pretty enough to the untrained eye—and his jade was just glass dyed green. Little better than marbles when it came to spell casting, only the most foolish Witches and Wizards had considered buying those.

With the new Treaty between the Three Courts and the Unification, there were more tourists pouring in to Maeve’s Court every day, and Fae business people were struggling to keep up with Wizarding demand. They scrabbled to equip their places of business with stones their patrons could use, to show them they were both welcome and not in any danger from their Fae hosts. To deal with demand, the market for precious stones had skyrocketed in price. Most people couldn’t afford to equip themselves with all the necessary stones to put a discerning Witch or Wizard at ease, so they turned to less reputable sellers. Like Luke.

And hey, you get what you pay for. Luke never promised his stones would be great quality. He only guaranteed a price.

But selling to the oaf of a Fae who sat himself opposite Luke in the limo, cracking his knuckles as though he’d learned to be a gangster out of terrible mob movies, had been the low point of his career as a grifter. Well—okay, not the low point. But one of them. At least the lowest point recently.

Luke tried to sigh at himself, but the air was immediately pushed out of his lungs by the mountains seated to his left and right. Considering the size of the Sequoia in front of him, he thought the two Fae who acted as ‘muscle’ were somewhat overkill, but he wasn’t about to argue with his captor. Not now. Now was the time for talking his way out of trouble, not into more of it.

"That was your turf? he asked, feigning disbelief. Spruce and Fir, Ray, I’m sorry! If I’d’ve known—well, I’d’ve never tried to muscle in on your territory."

He laid on the cheese as thick as he could, still convinced his captor was at least of the same intelligence level as a Troll, if not the gene pool. He’d also guessed at the name. Though Luke didn’t know this Sequoia by sight, he figured it was a safe bet that he was son of the infamous Ray Sequoia and named for his father. No one had seen Ray Sequoia or his son in years. His daughters were everywhere, all over the news and the tabloids, making appearances at all the hot society events and high-class affairs. They were the public face of the family, and though they were often involved in sordid affairs, nothing criminal ever stuck to them.

But the Rays were kept out of sight, always lurking in the shadows, and by the sight of the monstrous Fae Luke had managed to offend, he had an idea why it was they were kept out of the public eye. Maeve’s Court, for all its liberties and freedoms, still had a strange obsession with beauty. Nothing moved you forward in life faster than a pretty face and body, and Ray Sequoia had neither. His jaw protruded too far out beneath his nose, giving him a rather severe under-bite, and his forehead dropped down too low over his eyes, casting the tiny black beads into further shadow. Luke looked more like a Sequoia than Ray did, his golden blond hair, grey eyes, and angular good looks more in keeping with the aesthetic of the Sequoia women than this brute.

Name’s Junior, Ray said, and Luke tried not to react. A grown man, let alone a man as large as this was, calling himself Junior was about as sad as a three-legged cat. Junior seemed to be waiting for the inevitable snicker. And you can cut the crap. I know you’ve been set up on that corner for weeks now, diluting the quality of my sales and undercutting my prices by selling your shit to my customers. He cracked his knuckles again to punctuate his points. Luke’s expression shifted microscopically. You’ve been avoiding my men for over a week, packing up and getting out of dodge before they had a chance to have a word with you. He shook his head, and Luke cursed himself for sticking to the prejudice that this man was as dumb as he looked. "Gave me no choice but to come out here myself. And I hate having to step out to handle things myself. Know what that means?"

Luke grinned a question. That this’ll be over quickly and you’ll let me off with a warning?

His charm was really more effective on people he wasn’t quite so horrified by.

Cracking knuckles. Oh, it’ll be over with quickly, he said.

The car smelled overwhelmingly of leather and carpet cleaner. Luke wondered distantly why that might be while he tried to avoid staring down Junior Sequoia. A moment passed, his heartbeat ticking away the seconds, and the car came to a stop. The door opened, and Luke let out a breath of air as silently as he could. He tried not to be shaken by these people, these glorified bullies of the underground world, but it was difficult.

He was ushered inside a steel door and down a poorly lit hallway that smelled of antiseptic and metal. He tried to take in details of his surroundings, but there were none. Just metal sheeting and flickering light strung along the corridor. Trying not to be alarmed by the fact that his captors didn’t care to blindfold him, Luke followed along, his mind scrabbling for something to hold on to, some edge of a lie, some con he could pull to get himself out of this. Preferably with his skin intact.

But suddenly, they stopped before a doorway filled with a thin film of iridescent light, as though the surface of a crystal pool was somehow upright. The frame of the door beaded with condensation, small drops forming larger ones, then streaming down along the cool metal. Luke stared in awe at the portal.

How do you have a portal without water— Luke began, but before he could even finish the question, he was bodily shoved through the thing.

His face collided with the surface of the iridescent film as though he was falling face-first into a pool of water. The slap against his cheek and violent shudder down his body radiated pain. Luke cried out, opening his mouth only to abruptly swallow a lungful of actual water. He coughed and spluttered, flailing and sloshing, trying to breathe through the liquid, until finally he pushed himself up to the surface. It was only once he coughed out enough of the water he’d inhaled that he realized he was sitting in a foot of water in the middle of a beautiful sitting room. Or, what had once been a beautiful sitting room. Before someone had come in a splashed water all over it.

Soaked and embarrassed, still choking on the air he was trying to gulp down, Luke was seated in a small indoor pond with a massive rock wall behind him, streaming a quiet, trickling waterfall. The wider room was marble and wood in warm cream colours with dashes of red and brown throughout. The walls were adorned with tapestries and paintings of some of the great artists of the Three Courts, and Luke had a sneaking suspicious they were not reproductions. The water feature was at the centre of the room, in the same position most would place a hearth. The sofas were leather and plush and all faced toward him, with a heavy wood coffee table in the centre. Atop the coffee table was an ornate, gilded pot of tea and several matching cups.

Blinking through the water streaming down his face, Luke pushed himself to his feet, trying not to slip on the stones in the base of the pond. There was no one around, it seemed, and his heart pounding, he tried to collect himself. He looked down at the splattered water all around him and begged for a trade. He pulled the air from around the surface of the pond, the air he’d forced into the water with his sudden appearance, and he traded it with the water he’d splashed around the room. In an instant, the pond was slightly fuller and the surrounding area was dry. The paintings and tapestries, clearly ancient and priceless, were completely unharmed. With a sigh of relief, he did the same trade with his clothes as he stepped out of the pond, and before his feet touched the ground, they were dry.

How thoughtful, a voice said, as Luke glanced around, eyeing the expensive artworks and vases sitting atop a curio against the wall. He spun to find Lady Sequoia standing there, long and lithe and wearing a fitted, emerald green cocktail dress. Her throat was adorned with a string of bright pearls, with matching bracelet and earrings. Her ring finger bore a ring crusted with sapphires and diamonds. She had no need of these stones, of course, but bearing them was in itself a sign of status. Particularly the sapphires, which were highly controlled and regulated by the government of Nimueh’s Court.

Any time, m’Lady, Luke said, bowing shallowly and offering her his most winning smile. It had lost some of its shine, lately, given how people tended to treat him after his smiled at them. Every since his brother… Well, not so many people were excited to be charmed by him now.

I’d rather hope not, she said, gazing in disinterest at her own nails. It wouldn’t do to have a weasel like you around mucking up the place on a regular basis. Luke’s jaw tightened. He hated being called a weasel. Weasel, goblin, rat. Each just as bad as the last. Junior appeared at the doorway of the room, his own hair freshly fluffed and giving him the look of a bulldog with the hairstyle of a Pomeranian. How good of you to join us, son, she said, arms crossing over her chest. He nodded to her once. Now we can see to the matter of your guest so I can get on with my day.

Luke swallowed imperceptibly. I didn’t realize a small mistake in location warranted a meeting with the Lady of the family.

Lady Sequoia looked unimpressed. Don’t be ridiculous, she said. Surely you didn’t think you were getting away with undermining our stone sales all over the city? Yes, actually, Luke thought. You’ve been impinging on various Sequoia territories for months now, and I honestly didn’t think you this foolish, Lucian. She looked him up and down. Or should I call you Luci?

Jaw muscles taut, Luke said, Luke, if you please. So she knew who he was, clearly. Which was perhaps why they were still standing so far from him. And why, he realized, there were guards stationed around the outside perimeter of the room. He saw a flash of the muzzle of a gun as Junior stepped closer. They were nearly as afraid of him as he was of them. If I’ve offended your family in any way, m’Lady, I assure you it was in simple ignorance, nothing more. I have no desire to be at odds with you, your family, or the head of your great House. Luke looked around. Will he be joining us…?

The head of the House is here, she snapped, her eyes sharp as knives. You’re looking at her.

Luke fought the urge to drop his jaw. But Ray Senior…?

Looking down at her hands again, Lady Sequoia adjusted the ring on her finger. "Did you know that to effect a trade for strength of mind, you must first be in possession of some strength of mind? she asked, her tone bored. Quite the predicament, isn’t it? You can’t trade for your own sanity unless you are, already, sane. She shrugged. My husband discovered that the hard way."

A chill ran down his spine. He made a minute step backward. And you’re telling me this because…

Oh, I hardly think it will matter, she said, and with a gesture from her, the men surrounding the room filed in in an instant and surrounded Luke, rifles pointed at all angles of him. He stared down the barrel of the guns at his face, wondering vaguely if the terror at being faced with a gun ever did fade away. Thinking back to the first time he’d been in a similar position, he deduced that no, not really. It was still just as terrifying.

M’Lady, if you please, he said, his tone remarkably calm. I apologize for the disrespect I’ve shown you and your family. But surely we can come to some kind of arrangement that might suit your needs better than this. He glanced at the guns again, then decided looking away was the best bet. Focusing on Lady Sequoia was much easier on his eyes than looking at any of the twelve barrels pinning him to the spot. He was only grateful he didn’t have to piss. You’d hardly want to destroy your beautiful pixie-woven carpet, after all.

A grumbling growl from his side told Luke that Junior was not pleased with the proceedings. Just shoot him, Ma, he said, rolling his eyes. You know you can’t trust a word out of his mouth. He’s a filthy weasel, just like his brother. Probably turn back and bite you the moment you let it go.

Luke fought against the tide of rage in his chest. Being compared to his brother was, by far, the worst insult. A flash of a high-pitched laugh, the manic amusement of a child doing something he shouldn’t and getting away with it, and Luke pushed the memory aside.

What do you propose, Lucian? Lady Sequoia asked. She seemed much more interested in entertaining herself than actually giving him a shot, but he could work with that.

A deal, he said. Whatever you please. Allow me to make amends to your family.

A tinkling laugh and the guns at his face cocked. A deal? she asked, considering. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she thought. The magic would keep you to your word.

Luke nodded. Yes, he said. You formulate the wording however you like, and I will agree to it.

Of course, she’ll formulate it, you daft rodent, Junior shot, and Luke rolled his jaw slightly.

Your dealings have harmed our business, but only minutely, she said, ignoring both Luke and her son. The only reason we’ve felt it at all is the sapphire shortage on the market. But I know of a place where some might be found. You get us the sapphires, and we’ll give you your life. Your debt to us will be erased, and we’ll forget your face and your name. Fail, and you forfeit your life. You will have one week. Understand?

A flood of cold passed into Luke’s veins as Junior held out his hand